The John Muir Discovery Award is an environmental award, which aims to help young people appreciate and value nature, urban greenspaces and wild landscapes.
It promotes educational, social and personal development through exploration of wild places and involvement in conservation.
To complete the John Muir Discovery Award:
- Discover a wild place
- Look at what is there, notice interesting features and describe the character of the place
- Explore it
- Paddle, swim, walk, climb, play games, engage the senses, identify plants, notice human influences.
- Conserve it
- Be careful not to trample plants, pick up litter, minimise erosion, monitor habitats.
- Share what you have learnt
- This award leaves room for the children / young people to be creative in how they record and share their experience. There are no rules or record sheets.
- E.g. Diaries, presentations, art, drama, video, displays. Anything goes!
How will we include the John Muir award as part of your CMC Adventure?
The CMC sessions hardly change, they lend themselves to the award. Our activities already enable students to discover wild places and actively explore them. We regularly include thought provoking discussions about how we can care for the environment and ensure that others can enjoy it too.
If you choose to incorporate the John Muir Award as part of your residential, we will simply include games, activities and reflections to help the students think along these lines.
During an evening, we can support you in helping the students to share their experiences with each other. The ‘share’ part can be simple or creative, as long as they reflect on their experience, it doesn’t matter how they share it.
We will also introduce John Muir (1838-1914) and his legacy.
- Explorer, Mountaineer, Campaigner
- ‘Father of National Parks’
- Writer and Poet – His use of powerful words to praise and defend the places he loved.
